at Embarcadero, they are passed out on the platform, one with his pants unzipped. I'm sitting on the train with one other BART employees and into the car comes this black guy. He stinks to high heaven, stinking up the hole car. I'm just getting off a 15-hour shift and he just made me miserable and enjoyed every minute of it. Then he takes off his shoes and puts his dirty smelly feet on the seats. I will never sit outside of the Train operator's door again. That's where he was. I'm wondering why the BART employee was more interested in watching her TV than doing something about this guy. There were homeless asleep all over the train. You know none of these dirty ass people paid for a ticket. They are just the most grossest things I've ever seen. I don't understand why there is no one at the Embarcadero station keeping these creeps OUT. This isn't fair to the paying patrons to have to sit with someone who smells up an entire car. After he took his shoes off, i had to move to another car. When he sat down I had to get up and move to the middle of the car cuz he smelled so bad. I like to sit in the lead car when it is late at night because I feel safer with the Train Operator around. BART absolutely has to do something about these people. No wonder people think the cars are so dirty. After someone poor BART employee has busted their ass cleaning all night, BART lets some dirty gross loser sleep on the seats and leave his gross smell. BLACK PEOPLE TAKE A F'N SHOWER; TEACH YOUR PEOPLE SOME MANNERS. GHEESE! YOU ARE GROSS, GROSS, GROSS LOSERS.

In my opinion, Embarcadero station is nasty from the conditions to the type of low lifes that hang out there. I don't mind the begging because you can always refuse that, what I do mind is the body odor and gross smelly people who hang out at the entrace. Also, I have a bone to pick with the escalators too, it seems they are always down and at one point it was down for over 3 weeks. I always take stairs but while that escalator was down, the stairs were jammed packed. Talk about slow.

The low lifes who hang out at Embarcadero station are well known to BART police. The Station Agents know them by name and chase them out when BART police are not there. The city of San Francsico welcomes these scum and encourages them to live in the parks or anywhere they want. The city of San Francisco encourages them to urinate and deficate wherever and whenever they feel the need. The city of San Francisco has become one big sewer. Thank You Mayor Nuisance....I mean Newsom.

BART management does not care whether passengers pay their fare or not. That's why Station Agents don't worry if someone sneaks onto the platform using the elevator or the gates at the far end of the station away from the booth. Every dishonest person knows exactly how to get into a BART station without paying. You would be amazed at how creative they are.

At Macarthur I have seen people go to the end of the platform, open a gate, walk down stairs and then walk between the trackways and then disappear! WHILE PUSHING A STROLLER WITH A BABY. I don't know where they go, but I do know they are not paying to exit the station and I do know they are not BART employees. BART police know this goes on. BART management knows this goes on. BART Train Operators know this goes on.

Besides complaining about how filthy the train cars are; how disgusting the restrooms are; how rude the employees are; how stupid it is to run 8 car trains at the height of the commute; how exasperating it is to have a ticket demagnitize; how annoying it is to have panhandlers on the trains; how irritating it is to find your car broken into, or worse, stolen....it's time to start complaining to BART management about F A R E E V A D E R S.

Don't you realize that the honest, hard working people who do pay to ride BART are subsidizing those who don't? Isn't it bad enough that we now have to pay for parking in addition to increased fare? Do we have to pay for the fare evaders too? Why should I have to ride a train with a person who doesn't bathe and doesn't pay? No wonder so many people are still willing to pay over $3/gal for gas to ride alone in their own clean car.

I'll tell you why that BART employee didn't do anything about that stinky person. 1)She's been disciplined too many times for taking on fare evaders; 2)she's smart enough to know that pig may be armed or violent if approached; 3)if YOU won't do anything why should she????

Thank God none of the BART riders were on Flight 93. That plane would have crashed into the White House while all the BART riders sat around saying "why doesn't somebody do something?" They would have pulled out their laptops and logged onto "American Airlines RAGE" website and complained about the flight delay because these Arab men were waving knives and where were the American Airlines Police to take these guys off the plane. And then they would have launced into how expensive the fare was, how lousy the food was, how crowded the airport was and all the other meaningless crap BUT THEY WOULD NOT DO ANYTHING TO MAKE A CHANGE.

It's time to start a grass roots campaign to get BART to make sosme serious changes. Time to start picketing BART stations. Let's encourage a day of mass fare evasion, a day of mass smoking, a day of mass eating on the trains, a day of mass loud radios and every other rule breaking we can think of. We need to get BART management's attention in order to make some real changes.

Sadly this is true here in the Bay Area. A lot of people don't even know the name of their next door neighbors. Growing up, I knew everyone on the block. I called the adults Mr. or Mrs. Never considered using their first names. Never considered talking back. The consequences were to great. Definitley would not consider sneaking onto a train without paying or taking something from the store without paying. There was nothing a police officer or store owner could do to me that would worse than the disappointment I would see in my parents' eyes and the punishment I would receive. I'm not talking about a beating. I'm talking about the extra chores. Or the kind of things that today would be called community service, except that my parents would arrange for the "service" themselves. I was not a perfect child. I was a normal child and when I stepped out of line, I was disciplined fairly and firmly. That's why I feel so strongly about right and wrong today.

The neighbors got involved. It one of the kids was bullying another, the parents put a stop to it. Sometimes the kids themselves handled it. They would shame the bully until he changed his ways. Peer pressure worked wonders back then. Today, peer pressure works the opposite way. It drags people down to the lower level instead of bringing them up to a higher level of behavior. What a shame.

We live in an age where punishment is passe. Personal responsibility is a joke. If someone does something wrong, it isn't their fault. Blame society for oppressing them, or their mother for not hugging them enough, or their 3rd grade teacher for giving them detention one too many times, or the government for not giving them enough handouts.

It saddens me that I didn't live in a time when respect, hard work, responsiblity, and morals governed. While my parents still instilled these things in me, I saw my friends grow up in environments where their parents were more concerned with being their child's "friend" than their authority figure. Spanking, grounding, scolding, etc. were no longer acceptable (I remember other kids "threatening" to call child protective services on their parents and tell them they were being abused, whether true or not, if their parents tried to punish them or enforce the rules -- and often times the parents backed down out of fear). Instead, parents have chosen to be selfish, and deny any responsibility on the part of themselves or their children. They figure someone else will eventually clean up the messes they have made.

I remember when the kid down the street stole my little brother's toy. My parents went down to talk to this kid's parents about it, and the parents denied their kid took it without even asking their kid. In the meantime, the kid was in the garage, playing with the toy. My parents used to write our names on our toys with a Sharpie, just in case something like this happened. The other kid's parents could have solved it in 5 seconds by checking that toy. But, instead they started screaming at my mother about how unacceptable it was that she would come over there and accuse their perfect child of any wrong doing without having any proof. Funny that years later, that kid grew up to be a gang banger, and spent some time in prison.

I don't know what it's going to take to swing the pendulum back to common sense, decency, and morality. Maybe when the inconsiderate, selfish, amoral individuals who are currently plaguing society get sick of being ripped off themselves. Then again, it seems that currently their answer to that is to find their "attacker" and shoot him up. I know it's completley un-PC to say, but maybe it's Natural Selection at work.

One of the negative effects of living in such an over-crowded society is that people reverse-course and become highly self-isolated. Nobody wants to ever see (or be seen by) their neighbors. Nobody wants to participate in anything. Nobody wants to take responsibility, or help out. I think people get so overwhelmed with the constant stimulation and barrage of people that they withdraw in any way they can. It's much easier to run away from things than deal with them (or so it seems). But all this does is make society that much more succeptable to the things we all say we hate. I just wish more people had the common sense to understand that.

Very True.
But I also blame society for molding our justice and political system.
If a society is weak, they vote for similar leaders and a political system, whcih then molds society.

Take Texas vs. California. We are both in the U.S., but the political and social issues are way different. In California, you have strict gun laws, more social programs, etc... Texas, you can shoot someone for "attempting" to steal your car from your home driveway at night.

So I agree with what you say, but I think that the only one's to blame for how things are going are ourselves.

And, what could I have done at 4:30 in the morning? Held up the train waiting for BART Police who will do nothing because someone stinks. The BART employee should have done something about it; that is their job but they rather watch TV.

Wow...I was with you about smelly people until your bigotry appeared. It is disgusting when folks smell bad. The comment about black people...it shows shallow thinking that only the black bums..homeles...unfortunate...slackers...,(you pick your term),smell bad. If you don't see the problem(minus ethnicity) are TRULY blinded by your bigotry. I smell lots of people and the majority of the stinky bodies are not black people.